The History of Cascara: How the Coffee Cherry Became a Tea

Written by Marc Narrie, founder of Buddha Beans Coffee Co. and specialty coffee roaster since 2019. Buddha Beans has been infusing coffee with CBG since launch, making it one of the first CBG coffee brands in the US.

Cascara is not new. People in coffee-growing regions have brewed the dried coffee cherry for hundreds of years, long before anyone roasted the bean the way we do now. What is new is the rest of the world paying attention. The word cascara, Spanish for "husk" or "skin," is recent branding for a very old drink.

Here is how the fruit around the coffee bean traveled from farm tradition to a specialty product you can order online.

What the word "cascara" means

Cascara means "husk" or "skin" in Spanish. It refers to the dried skin and pulp of the coffee cherry, the red fruit that surrounds the two seeds we roast as coffee beans. The name spread through the specialty-coffee world in the last twenty years or so, but the practice of drinking the cherry is much older and goes by many local names.

Qishr: Yemen's spiced coffee-cherry drink

In Yemen, the dried coffee husk has been brewed for generations as qishr, often simmered with ginger and cinnamon. In parts of Yemeni tradition the cherry drink was as common at home as the roasted bean, and in some periods more so. Qishr is one of the oldest documented ways of drinking the coffee fruit rather than the seed, and it is still made today.

Ethiopia and the coffee husk

Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee, and it also has a long history of using the whole cherry. Traditional preparations across different regions have steeped the dried husk and even the coffee leaf into warm drinks. For communities that grew coffee, brewing the fruit was a practical, everyday use of a part of the harvest that would otherwise go to waste.

Bolivia and Latin America

In Bolivia and other parts of Latin America, the dried coffee cherry has long been brewed as a homemade drink. As Spanish-speaking coffee regions developed their own habits around the fruit, "cascara," the word for its husk, became the common name, and it is the one that eventually stuck internationally.

From byproduct to specialty product

For most of modern coffee history, the cherry was treated as waste. Processing a coffee harvest means pulling the beans out and discarding huge volumes of fruit, which was usually composted, used as fertilizer, or dumped. The bean was the product. The fruit was the leftover.

That started to change in the specialty-coffee era. In the 2000s, a handful of producers and roasters began drying and selling the cherry deliberately, presenting cascara as a product in its own right rather than a scrap. Growers in Central America were among those who helped move it from farm tradition into cafes and specialty menus. As interest in sustainability and using more of the plant grew, so did the market for cascara.

The novel-food question

Because cascara was uncommon on Western shelves, regulators had to decide how to classify it. Today you can find cascara alongside traditional coffee in our full product collection. In the European Union, dried coffee cherry pulp, sold as cascara, was authorized for the market in 2022, recognized as a traditional food from outside the EU rather than a brand-new invention. In the United States, cascara is sold as a food, and reputable sellers work from a food-safe sourcing basis. The regulatory catch-up is part of why cascara felt "new" to shoppers even though the drink itself is centuries old.

Cascara today

Today cascara sits at the meeting point of two trends: specialty coffee looking for the next interesting thing, and the wider push to waste less of what we grow. It is one of the clearest examples of upcycled food, a drink made from a part of the plant that used to be thrown away. For a fruit that spent most of its history as a farm leftover, that is a real turn.

Frequently asked questions about the history of cascara

How old is cascara tea?
The practice of brewing the dried coffee cherry goes back centuries in coffee-growing regions like Yemen and Ethiopia. The modern specialty-coffee version is only about twenty years old.

What is qishr?
Qishr is a traditional Yemeni drink made from the dried coffee husk, often brewed with ginger and cinnamon. It is one of the oldest ways of drinking the coffee fruit.

Why was cascara thrown away for so long?
In most of the coffee world, the bean was the product and the surrounding fruit was treated as waste. Only recently did producers start drying and selling the cherry on purpose.

Where does the word cascara come from?
It is Spanish for "husk" or "skin," describing the dried fruit that wraps around the coffee bean.

Try our first batch of Cascara Coffee Cherry Tea

Our Cascara Coffee Cherry Tea continues a very old habit: brewing the fruit around the bean instead of throwing it away. It is the other half of the coffee plant, dried and steeped into a soft, cherry-sweet tea. This is a small first batch, so grab it while it lasts. If you are new to it, start with what cascara tea is or read about upcycled coffee and the other half of the plant.

Shop Cascara Coffee Cherry Tea →

This article is for general information and is not medical advice. Cascara Coffee Cherry Tea is a food, not a dietary supplement, and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

Cascara is the dried fruit of the coffee cherry (Coffea), sold as a food and herbal beverage, not as a dietary supplement or drug. It naturally contains caffeine, about 25mg per cup. It is not cascara sagrada, an unrelated plant sold as a laxative. Nothing here is intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. If you are pregnant, nursing, or sensitive to caffeine, check with your healthcare provider.

Cascara predates roasted coffee by several centuries, with Ethiopian and Yemeni communities brewing dried coffee cherry husks as "qishr" long before anyone thought to roast the seed inside the fruit.

The European Union classified cascara as a novel food in 2017, temporarily restricting its sale and highlighting the regulatory complexity that comes with reviving an ancient ingredient for modern commercial markets.

Specialty coffee's third-wave movement rediscovered cascara in the early 2000s, transforming what Central American farmers had treated as waste into a premium cafe ingredient valued for its unique dried-fruit flavor profile.

Key Dates in Cascara History